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PSYCHOLOGY
CONTENTS
Psychology .....................................................................................................................................................................1
Introduction of Psychology ........................................................................................................................................1
History .......................................................................................................................................................................2
Structuralism .........................................................................................................................................................2
Functionalism ........................................................................................................................................................2
Psychoanalysis .......................................................................................................................................................2
Behaviorism ...........................................................................................................................................................3
Humanistic .............................................................................................................................................................4
Gestalt ...................................................................................................................................................................4
Existentialism .........................................................................................................................................................5
Cognitivism ............................................................................................................................................................5
My Courses ................................................................................................................................................................6
Works Cited ...................................................................................................................................................................6
INTRODUCTION OF PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology is an academic and applied discipline that involves the scientific study of mental functions and
behaviors. Psychology has the immediate goal of understanding individuals and groups by both establishing
general principles and researching specific cases, and by many accounts it ultimately aims to benefit society. In this
field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist and can be classified as a social, behavioral,
or cognitive scientist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social
behavior, while also exploring the physiological and biological processes that underlie cognitive functions and
behaviors.
Psychologists explore concepts such as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, phenomenology, motivation,
brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships, including psychological resilience, family
resilience, and other areas. Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious mind.
Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial
variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical
and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques.
Psychology has been described as a "hub science", with psychological findings linking to research and perspectives
from the social sciences, natural sciences, medicine, and the humanities, such as philosophy.
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HISTORY
The study of psychology in a philosophical context dates back to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China,
India, and Persia. Historians note that Greek philosophers, including Thales, Plato, and Aristotle (especially in his
De Anima treatise), covered the workings of the mind in their writings. As early as the 4th century BC, Greek
physician Hippocrates theorized that mental disorders were of a physical, rather than divine, nature.
STRUCTURALISM
German physician Wilhelm Wundt is credited with introducing psychological discovery into a laboratory setting.
Known as the "father of experimental psychology", he founded the first psychological laboratory, at Leipzig
University, in 1879. Wundt focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components,
motivated in part by an analogy to recent advances in chemistry, and its successful investigation of the elements
and structure of material. Although Wundt, himself, was not a structuralist, his student Edward Titchener, a major
figure in early American psychology, was a structuralist thinker opposed to functionalist approaches.
FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalism formed as a reaction to the theories of the structuralist school of thought and was heavily
influenced by the work of the American philosopher, scientist, and psychologist William James. James felt that
psychology should have practical value, and that psychologists should find out how the mind can function to a
person's benefit. In his book, Principles of Psychology, published in 1890, he laid the foundations for many of the
questions that psychologists would explore for years to come. Other major functionalist thinkers included John
Dewey and Harvey Carr.
Other 19th-century contributors to the field include the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus, a pioneer in
the experimental study of memory, who developed quantitative models of learning and forgetting at the
University of Berlin, and the Russian-Soviet physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who discovered in dogs a learning process
that was later termed "classical conditioning" and applied to human beings.
Starting in the 1950s, the experimental techniques developed by Wundt, James, Ebbinghaus, and others reemerged as experimental psychology became increasingly cognitivist—concerned with information and its
processing—and, eventually, constituted a part of the wider cognitive science. In its early years, this development
was seen as a "revolution," as cognitive science both responded to and reacted against then-popular theories,
including psychoanalytic and behaviorist theories.
PSYCHOANALYSIS
From the 1890s until his death in 1939, the Austrian physician Sigmund Freud developed psychoanalysis, which
comprised a method of investigating the mind and interpreting experience; a systematized set of theories about
human behavior; and a form of psychotherapy to treat psychological or emotional distress, especially unconscious
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conflict. Freud's psychoanalytic theory was largely based on interpretive methods, introspection and clinical
observations. It became very well known, largely because it tackled subjects such as sexuality, repression, and the
unconscious mind as general aspects of psychological development. These were largely considered taboo subjects
at the time, and Freud provided a catalyst for them to be openly discussed in polite society. Clinically, Freud helped
to pioneer the method of free association and a therapeutic interest in dream interpretation.
Freud had a significant influence on Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose analytical psychology became an
alternative form of depth psychology. Other well-known psychoanalytic scholars of the mid-20th century included
psychoanalysts, psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers. Among these thinkers were Erik Erikson, Melanie
Klein, D.W. Winnicott, Karen Horney, Erich Fromm, John Bowlby, and Sigmund Freud's daughter, Anna Freud.
Throughout the 20th century, psychoanalysis evolved into diverse schools of thought, most of which may be
classed as Neo-Freudian.
Psychoanalytic theory and therapy were criticized by psychologists such as Hans Eysenck, and by philosophers
including Karl Popper. Popper, a philosopher of science, argued that psychoanalysis had been misrepresented as a
scientific discipline, whereas Eysenck said that psychoanalytic tenets had been contradicted by experimental data.
By the end of 20th century, psychology departments in American universities had become scientifically oriented,
marginalizing Freudian theory and dismissing it as a "desiccated and dead" historical artifact. Meanwhile, however,
researchers in the emerging field of neuro-psychoanalysis defended some of Freud's ideas on scientific grounds,
while scholars of the humanities maintained that Freud was not a "scientist at all, but ... an interpreter."
BEHAVIORISM
In the United States, behaviorism became the dominant
school of thought during the 1950s. Behaviorism is a
discipline that was established in the early 20th century by
John B. Watson, and embraced and extended by Edward
Thorndike, Clark L. Hull, Edward C. Tolman, and later B.F.
Skinner. Theories of learning emphasized the ways in which
people might be predisposed, or conditioned, by their
environments to behave in certain ways.
Classical conditioning was an early behaviorist model. It
posited that behavioral tendencies are determined by
Skinner's teaching machine, a mechanical
immediate associations between various environmental
invention to automate the task of
stimuli and the degree of pleasure or pain that follows. Behavioral
programmed instruction.
patterns, then, were understood to consist of organisms'
conditioned responses to the stimuli in their environment. The
stimuli were held to exert influence in proportion to their prior
repetition or to the previous intensity of their associated pain or pleasure. Much research consisted of laboratorybased animal experimentation, which was increasing in popularity as physiology grew more sophisticated.
Skinner's behaviorism shared with its predecessors a philosophical inclination toward positivism and determinism.
He believed that the contents of the mind were not open to scientific scrutiny and that scientific psychology should
emphasize the study of observable behavior. He focused on behavior–environment relations and analyzed overt
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and covert (i.e., private) behavior as a function of the organism interacting with its environment. Behaviorists
usually rejected or deemphasized dualistic explanations such as "mind" or "consciousness"; and, in lieu of probing
an "unconscious mind" that underlies unawareness, they spoke of the "contingency-shaped behaviors" in which
unawareness becomes outwardly manifest.
Notable incidents in the history of behaviorism are John B. Watson's Little Albert experiment which applied
classical conditioning to the developing human child, and the clarification of the difference between classical
conditioning and operant (or instrumental) conditioning, first by Miller and Kanorski and then by Skinner. Skinner's
version of behaviorism emphasized operant conditioning, through which behaviors are strengthened or weakened
by their consequences.
Linguist Noam Chomsky's critique of the behaviorist model of language acquisition is widely regarded as a key
factor in the decline of behaviorism's prominence. Martin Seligman and colleagues discovered that the
conditioning of dogs led to outcomes ("learned helplessness") that opposed the predictions of behaviorism. But
Skinner's behaviorism did not die, perhaps in part because it generated successful practical applications. The fall of
behaviorism as an overarching model in psychology, however, gave way to a new dominant paradigm: cognitive
approaches.
HUMANISTIC
Humanistic psychology was developed in the 1950s in reaction to both behaviorism and psychoanalysis.[37] By
using phenomenology, intersubjectivity, and first-person categories, the humanistic approach sought to glimpse
the whole person—not just the fragmented parts of the personality or cognitive functioning.[38] Humanism
focused on fundamentally and uniquely human issues, such as individual free will, personal growth, selfactualization, self-identity, death, aloneness, freedom, and meaning.
The humanistic approach was distinguished by its emphasis on
subjective meaning, rejection of determinism, and concern for positive
growth rather than pathology.[citation needed] Some of the founders
of the humanistic school of thought were American psychologists
Abraham Maslow, who formulated a hierarchy of human needs, and
Carl Rogers, who created and developed client-centered therapy. Later,
positive psychology opened up humanistic themes to scientific modes
of exploration.
GESTALT
Psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943
posited that humans have a hierarchy of
needs, and it makes sense to fulfill the
basic needs first (food, water etc.) before
higher-order needs can be met.
Wolfgang Kohler, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka co-founded the
school of Gestalt psychology. This approach is based upon the idea
that individuals experience things as unified wholes. This approach to
psychology began in Germany and Austria during the late 19th century
in response to the molecular approach of structuralism. Rather than breaking down thoughts and behavior to their
smallest element, the Gestalt position maintains that the whole of experience is important, and the whole is
different from the sum of its parts.
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Gestalt psychology should not be confused with the Gestalt therapy of Fritz Perls, which is only peripherally linked
to Gestalt psychology.
EXISTENTIALISM
In the 1950s and 1960s, largely influenced by the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Danish
philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, psychoanalytically trained American psychologist Rollo May pioneered an
existential branch of psychology, which included existential psychotherapy, a method of therapy that operates on
the belief that inner conflict within a person is due to that individual's confrontation with the givens of existence.
Existential psychologists differed from others often classified as humanistic in their comparatively neutral view of
human nature and in their relatively positive assessment of anxiety. Existential psychologists emphasized the
humanistic themes of death, free will, and meaning, suggesting that meaning can be shaped by myths, or narrative
patterns, and that it can be encouraged by an acceptance of the free will requisite to an authentic, albeit often
anxious, regard for death and other future prospects.
Austrian existential psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl drew evidence of meaning's therapeutic
power from reflections garnered from his own internment, and he created a variation of existential psychotherapy
called logotherapy, a type of existentialist analysis that focuses on a will to meaning (in one's life), as opposed to
Adler's Nietzschean doctrine of will to power or Freud's will to pleasure.
In addition to May and Frankl, Swiss psychoanalyst Ludwig Binswanger and American psychologist George Kelly
may be said to belong to the existential school.
COGNITIVISM
Cognitive psychology is the branch of psychology that studies mental processes including problem solving,
perception, memory, and learning. As part of the larger field of cognitive science, this branch of psychology is
related to other disciplines including neuroscience, philosophy, and linguistics.
Noam Chomsky helped to launch a "cognitive revolution" in psychology when he criticized the behaviorists'
notions of "stimulus", "response", and "reinforcement". Chomsky argued that such ideas—which Skinner had
borrowed from animal experiments in the laboratory—could be applied to complex human behavior, most notably
language acquisition, in only a superficial and vague manner. The postulation that humans are born with the
instinct or "innate facility" for acquiring language posed a challenge to the behaviorist position that all behavior,
including language, is contingent upon learning and reinforcement.[44] Social learning theorists, such as Albert
Bandura, argued that the child's environment could make contributions of its own to the behaviors of an observant
subject.
Meanwhile, accumulating technology helped to renew interest and belief in the mental states and
representations—i.e., the cognition—that had fallen out of favor with behaviorists. English neuroscientist Charles
Sherrington and Canadian psychologist Donald O. Hebb used experimental methods to link psychological
phenomena with the structure and function of the brain. With the rise of computer science and artificial
intelligence, analogies were drawn between the processing of information by humans and information processing
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by machines. Research in cognition had proven practical since World War II, when it aided in the understanding of
weapons operation.[46] By the late 20th century, though, cognitivism had become the dominant paradigm of
psychology, and cognitive psychology emerged as a popular branch.
Assuming both that the covert mind should be studied, and that the scientific method should be used to study it,
cognitive psychologists set such concepts as subliminal processing and implicit memory in place of the
psychoanalytic unconscious mind or the behavioristic contingency-shaped behaviors. Elements of behaviorism and
cognitive psychology were synthesized to form the basis of cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of psychotherapy
modified from techniques developed by American psychologist Albert Ellis and American psychiatrist Aaron T.
Beck. Cognitive psychology was subsumed along with other disciplines, such as philosophy of mind, computer
science, and neuroscience, under the cover discipline of cognitive science.
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WORKS CITED
Wikipedia. (2014, April 15). Wikipedia. Retrieved April 17, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology